OSDCT holding grand opening Saturday

By BRITTANY FHOLER
Cove Leader-Press

Operation Stand Down Central Texas will hold a grand opening Saturday morning, welcoming the public to the non-profit’s new facility on Carpenter Street. 
Operation Stand Down Central Texas aims to help homeless veterans in the area. The organization holds two Stand Down events per year, one in the spring and one in the fall, that are open to the homeless population in Coryell and Bell counties and provide a free hot meal, along with free resources and services. Past Stand Downs have included haircuts, dental services, clothing, and more. 
OSDCT founders Joann Courtland and her mother Trudy Bolton attended their first stand down event in Huntsville, Alabama in 2009, where they served 100 homeless veterans in the meal tent and saw their outlook change regarding helping those in their community, Courtland said. 
Courtland and Bolton, with the help of volunteers, held their first event at the Killeen Community Center in October 2014 with a budget of $800, three vendors, and ended up helping six veterans that day. 
After that success, Courtland said they decided to form their own organization, and thus Operation Stand Down Central Texas was born in January 2015, operating out of Courtland’s garage in her Copperas Cove home. 
The organization then moved into a 1,200 square foot storefront in the Cove Terrace Shopping Center that August, and after outgrowing that space, moved into Suite 338 in the Cove Terrace Shopping Center just four months later, taking up 2,400 square feet of space. 
Operation Stand Down Central Texas enlisted the services of Coyote Design and Build for the construction of their new facility, which has double the square footage of their last location. They broke ground on the construction in April 2021. The Copperas Cove city council approved an ordinance for the rezoning of the property back in January 2020. 
The new facility, in addition to being larger, also comes with two ADA-accessible bathrooms with showers, along with an office and computer room, according to Courtland.
“The extra space will allow us to collect and distribute more donations to those in need as well as offer volunteers more space to come and assist,” Courtland said in an email to the Leader-Press. “While we are still doing our large events in Killeen-we need around 15,000 sq. feet for those- with the new space, we may be able to do a few smaller local events as well to help those in Copperas Cove.”
The grand opening will be Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022, at 11 a.m. at 201 Carpenter St.